The word from early testers of the much-rumored BlackBerry 9000 mystery smartphone have reported absolutely abysmal battery life. With the Wi-Fi running, testers say the battery runs dry with just two hours of Web browsing. Other features, though, impressed the users in the field.This comes directly from The Boy Genius' underground army of informants. Most of the feedback of the device (pictured here) is very positive, and the final-ish specs are holding up to what rumor sites had reported late in 2007. It is powered by a 624-MHz processor and has a 480-by-320 screen, built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, and 3G (finally!). Which variant of 3G isn't yet known.

According to the field testers, the full HTML Web browser is extremely speedy and loads pages in 3 to 4 seconds. Right now, it is running the BlackBerry OS 4.5, but I've seen screen shots that show it running a revised (and much more attractive) version of the operating system.

But the battery life isn't so solid. One reviewer writes, "Battery sucks, to be honest. With Wi-Fi on, I only got a little less than two hours browsing the Web." They also reported 4 hours of talk time, however, and that seems reasonable to me. But other testers also are reporting big issues with the battery life.

Since this phone hasn't been acknowledged at all by RIM, it's safe to say that we won't be seeing it on store shelves any time soon. I'm sure RIM's engineers will be able to fix any battery life problems. BlackBerrys are known, after all, for their excellent battery life.